Oil Imports In July Passed 50% of Supply

By MATTHEW L. WALD

Published: August 17, 1989

Imports supplied more than half of the nation's petroleum in July, for the first time since 1977, the American Petroleum Institute said yesterday.

The reason was higher demand for oil products and lower domestic production. Both are trends that began early in the decade.

July was only the fourth month in which imports amounted to more than half of deliveries, according to the institute, a trade organization based in Washington. The three other months were in 1977. But industry experts say that relying on foreign oil for half of the nation's supplies will soon be the norm.

''It's only a question of how soon we get there, not whether we get there,'' said John H. Lichtblau, president of the Petroleum Industry Research Foundation in New York. ''We will have to live with a high level of imports.'' Other Fuels Used

Mr. Lichtblau said that imports now, at 7.8 million barrels a day, are about a million barrels a day lower than in 1977. Other fuels have been substituted for oil in the intervening 12 years.

In July, the institute said, domestic deliveries of petroleum products were just shy of 17 million barrels a day, up 1.7 percent from a year ago, and imports amounted to 8.6 million, up 17.9 percent. Domestic crude oil output was 7.5 million barrels a day, down 7.1 percent from July 1988.

Last January, imports exceeded domestic production but did not exceed 50 percent of deliveries. The reason was that oil was taken out of stockpiles in that month.

The institute said that oil imports had now pushed past 50 percent of deliveries in part because production in Alaska has peaked. That state supplies a quarter of the nation's crude oil production.

Another reason for the shift is that oil companies are building their inventories slightly faster than usual, the institute said.

Production in the lower 48 states, which is driven largely by price, is down more than 20 percent since the oil price collapse of 1986. An 'Energy Strategy'

The Department of Energy is now devising a ''national energy strategy.'' The extent to which that will stimulate domestic oil production is not clear. That would probably require opening environmentally sensitive areas to production, including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska and offshore areas on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, and additional tax incentives to drillers at a time of budget stringency.

Mr. Lichtblau said that while the percentage of oil demand met by imports was rising, the number quoted by the American Petroleum Institute was a gross figure, and did not take into account American exports of oil products and crude oil.

This country exports lubricating oils and asphalt to a number of countries, and sends some crude oil to Canada. Taking this into account, he said, the nation's net import dependence in the first seven months of the year was 41 percent; the American Petroleum Institute, giving a gross figure, said it was 46.2 percent.